


Two Sides, Same Coin

by KivaEmber



Category: Final Fantasy XIV, Persona 5
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Final Fantasy XIV Fusion, Ambiguous Relationships, Canon Compliant - Final Fantasy XIV, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Established Relationship, Human Disaster Akechi Goro, M/M, Oneshot Series, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Romantic Friendship, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:21:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27212590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KivaEmber/pseuds/KivaEmber
Summary: A Dark Knight and an Arcanist go on a romantic journey to kill a man together. Well, kind of.or;A oneshot series in non-chronological order about Goro, a Dark Knight intent on hunting down his bastard of a father, and Akira, an Arcanist reinventing Summoner and miraculously not killing himself in the process. Updates will range from angsty to fluffy to a whole lotta worldbuilding being crammed in there, and will touch upon a lot of ffxiv canon events from a non-WoL POV (though they will have the Echo).
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 8
Kudos: 50





	Two Sides, Same Coin

As the midday sun crested the towering walls of Ul’dah, Goro winded his careful way through the cramped street of Pearl Lane. Adjacent to the opulence of Sapphire Lane, with its approved foreign merchants hawking wares towards the middle class and above, Pearl Lane possessed a far more dangerous air. Stalls were constructed with crates and threadbare tarps that vainly fended off the sweltering desert sun, an esoteric collection of wares laid out on display or tucked behind the well-armed merchants. Those were just _barely_ legal merchandise as well. If one wanted something with more _bite,_ there were many narrow alleyways that swept deep into the cracks of Ul’dah’s walls. It was advised that a very thick leather jerkin was worn for such misadventures. 

Luckily, Goro wasn’t here to play middle man or debt collector. He side-stepped the thick throng of desperate refugees and lower class Ul’dahns struggling to find a good deal or to off-load now useless heirlooms for a bite to eat, the crowd parting as much as it could in the cramped confines when they noticed his armour, sword and intimidating helm. 

He was sweating his _tits off,_ but the discomfort was worth it if it ensured him several fulms of personal space.

Eventually, Goro located his quarry tucked close to where Pearl Lane curved towards the Weavers’ Guild. The slim, acrobatic form of one Akira Kurusu was balanced atop of a crate to be easily seen by the small crowd gathered towards him, his black Carbuncle coiled close to his feet in its stereotypical cute pose, softening up those with a distinct weakness to adorable, glittering aether constructs. 

Goro loitered on the fringes of the crowd, crossing his arms over his breastplate as he watched Akira finish up his current performance. He was touting one of his alchemical creations, gesturing with flourishing, showmanlike gestures, his grins bright and charismatic, his voice a low, cajoling purr that enticed you to lean in. Goro watched the noon sun glitter off the white and black mask Akira insisted on wearing when doing these performances, could see a bead of sweat roll down his cheek and linger on the cut of his jaw, a faint flush on his cheeks. 

Akira’s robes, as skimpy as they were, didn’t seem to do much against the heat. They were recognisably _Arcanist,_ the thick grimoire bouncing at his hip with every enthusiastic movement, but Goro couldn’t recall any stern, bookish Arcanists back in Limsa Lominsa shamelessly baring their midriff and arms like Akira did. The exposed skin was carefully painted with aetherical ink that was applied, precisely and ritualistically, every morning. It was only recently Akira trusted Goro to help him with the lines painted along the back of his shoulders and the small of his back, a task that was strangely therapeutic to do. 

The sash of cotton lashed around Akira’s hips and left to flutter over his crotch snapped with his sharp movements. Goro saw a peek of skin, the inner thighs, the saroual’s fabric slit from the inside of the knee up towards the inside of his hip exposing the skin for those lucky enough to glimpse it past the heavy fabric of his sash.

Akira allowed him to paint the markings there too just that morning. The memory of it made him smile.

The performance ended not long after that. Eager customers pressed a grinning, satisfied Akira with mere handfuls of gil, and the crate that had been filled with whatever alchemical concoction he’d been hawking steadily emptied until there was nothing left except Akira, his meagre wealth, and Goro. 

“Barely noon, and you’re already out of stock,” Goro murmured, his helm warping his voice as he moved closer to his partner. He reached a hand out when Akira’s Carbuncle, Mona, came to greet him, pressing his gloved hand against its warm snout. 

“Yup. I finally figured out the proper buzzwords to get my customers eating out of my hand,” Akira said, happily patting the box he’d been prancing about on before, “Business is _good_ today.”

“Mm.”

Goro’s gaze drifted down to the leather purse Akira tipped their newfound wealth into. It was a little lighter than he liked. 

“Ul’dah is getting too expensive,” he said for what felt like the fiftieth time, “We should move on.”

“To _where_?” Akira sighed. This was a well-worn argument for them both, “To make money, you need to be in Ul’dah. Well, unless you want to turn to privateering with the Lominsans.” 

Goro made a face behind his helm. He’d rather eat Kobold shit. 

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Akira said wryly, deftly picking up his mood with minimal cues, “It’s slow going, I know…”

“Our profits are less than a hundred gil a _week,”_ Goro pointed out scathingly. 

“I did say it’d take time,” Akira said, tucking his purse _somewhere_ within the folds of his sash, out of sight despite the impossibility of it, “Travelling to Kugane is _expensive,_ not to mention the Ruby tithe, then paying off the Doman Resistance so we don’t get kidnapped or drafted…” 

Akira was right, but Goro _despised_ admitting he was right, so he growled instead, grinding his teeth and turning to viciously boot an empty crate. It skittered loudly against the cracked stone of the street. 

“The longer we _take,_ the harder it’ll be to find _him,”_ Goro snarled at the wall, vibrating with a rage that wasn’t _aimed_ at Akira, but was still so easy to fling in his direction. He could feel it as a living, writhing thing, thumping hard behind his sternum and rising as a flash of broiling heat behind his eyes. His aether crooned with the urge for violence-

Akira’s hands gently grasped his arm, and even through the layers of armour Goro felt it. He breathed in unsteadily. 

“I know,” Akira said softly, enduring the congealing, nauseous lurching of Goro’s cursed aether without even a flinch, “I know, Goro. It’s frustrating, but it’s better we go prepared, right? It’ll be kinda embarrassing if our mission ends in Kugane because we’re too poor to bribe the dock officials.”

Goro exhaled slowly. Steady. 

“Yeah,” he said, carefully boxing up that alien rage back into its box, _don’t drink too deep, the darkness will swallow you up, don’t drink too deep…_

“Yeah,” he repeated, more human this time, “You’re right.” 

“Wow,” Akira’s grin came easily, his grey eyes twinkling behind his mask, “Goro admitted I was right. You sure the sun isn’t getting to you?”

In one smooth, well-practised move, Goro pivoted on his heel enough to roughly headbutt Akira. His helm caught on his mask, drawing a startled yelp from his partner - but the noise swiftly transitioned into a soft, amused laugh, Akira grasping the back of his helmet to keep their foreheads together. 

“I still think we should leave Ul’dah,” Goro said after a comfortable silence, “Head towards Mor Dhona.”

“To the Adventurer’s Guild?” Akira guessed, pulling away and letting his fingers skim over Goro’s visor, pushing it up enough to get a glimpse of those dark eyes, “It’s harder to get a job there.”

“While you were conning people out of their money,” Goro said, pushing Akira’s hand away and letting his visor slide back into place with a quiet _‘snkt’_ , “I heard an interesting rumour.”

“Oh?”

“The Ishgardians are recruiting warm bodies to hold the Steps of Faith against the Dravanian Horde,” Goro said, “Or, more accurately, the Grand Companies are recruiting warm bodies to send to Ishgard for political capital. Adventurers and sellswords only.”

Akira frowned, “But the Grand Companies have their own troops…”

Goro made a darkly amused noise. 

“Oh,” Akira’s shoulders slumped, “It’s a snub and a way to make their pledge low-risk, huh?”

“It’s disgustingly exploitive,” Goro agreed, “But the pay’s good. Over five thousand gil to turn up, then fifteen thousand when you come back alive.”

“Oh, how nice,” Akira said sarcastically, “That’s sure to save them a lot of money when most of these desperate, _poorly trained_ adventurers die _en masse_ on the Steps of Faith.” 

“Right,” Goro lifted his hand so Akira could see him rub his forefinger and thumb together, “Plenty of corpses to scavenge.”

“ _Crow,_ ” Akira laughed, half-scandalised, half-amused, and lightly shoved at his armoured shoulder, “That’s a trade secret. Don’t just _say it out loud.”_

Goro shrugged, undaunted by the scolding. Akira might be the moral compass of the two, but the pair of them agreed that corpses and ruins were viable means of making money. It was a nice way to fatten up the coin purse in between the mind-numbingly dull pest control or debt collection jobs most Ul’dahn-based adventurers were saddled with. 

“So?” he prompted, “You in?”

Akira hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his sash, his gaze shifting to take in the tiny corner of Pearl Lane he’d made ‘his’. There was a hint of hesitation in his expression, but his voice was decisive as he said; “Sure. Sounds like it’d be fun.”

“And cold,” Goro reminded him, reaching out to poke his exposed stomach. The claw on his gauntlets cut into the skin, a bead of red rising. He rubbed it away with the pad of his gloved thumb, his hand splayed against the firm abs as he met Akira’s amused glance, “So remember to cover up. I'm not dragging you to a healer when you inevitably get frostbite.”

“I told you, I know a trick to amp up my body heat,” Akira gently pushed his hand away, his finger brushing over the cut. A glint of aether, and the wound was gone, “I could walk out there naked and still be toasty.”

“Mm, I’m sure the Dravanians would appreciate that. No clothes to catch in their throat when they swallow you whole.” 

“Ergh, you’re not endearing this job to me,” Akira grumbled, lightly smacking his bicep, “Help me cart these crates back to our hovel.”

“It’s not a _hovel_ ,” Goro grumbled, but he moved to help his partner. Morgana gamboled around their feet, making a nuisance of himself, but Goro and Akira were used to the carbuncle’s antics, and sidestepped and stepped over the aether construct absentmindedly, stacking up the crates between them.

“So, if we survive this job,” Akira said when they began their short trek ‘home’, “We’ll have forty thousand gil between us.”

“Plus whatever we scavenge from the dead weaklings.”

“Plus whatever we scavenge from the poor sods who come with us,” Akira amended, “So, that’s, what, five thousand per corpse, the Grand Companies are cheap, so they might send only a hundred adventurers per Company, so, three hundred…”

“Dravanians like tossing people off the Steps of Faith,” Goro added with a bit of vindictive mischievousness, “So those tossed into the Sea of Clouds will be unsalvageable. No amount of ‘tricks’ will save you from that fate.”

“You’re _really_ not endearing this job to me!” Akira huffed, “It’s cold, full of scaly, fire-breathing and _maneating_ Dravanians who, by the way, toss you off a bridge into a sea of destructive wind and lightning aether. Why should we go?”

“Forty thousand gil,” Goro said, and Akira groaned as if in agony. 

“It’s too tempting…” Akira moaned, “This is too cruel.”

Goro said nothing. It was cruel. He had no interest in the political machinations of Eorzea - each City State was as shitty as each other, honestly, and their history was gruesome and vicious - but what he did care about was that the military support was non-existent. There would be the Ishgardians at least, famed for being brilliant soldiers and highly skilled in killing Dravanians, but they would no doubt see the adventurers as cannon fodder to feed into the Dravanian’s jaws to save their own soldiers. It was going to be a hard, bloody and awful job. 

But. Forty thousand gil. Plus whatever they scavenged off the corpses once all was said and done. 

Goro thought of his goal, of _that man_ waiting in Yanxia, breathing air he didn’t deserve the right to, and felt like it would be worth it. He’d walk through a thousand hells if it meant he got his revenge, and Akira pledged to follow in his footsteps, even if his reasoning mystified him. He never understood Akira. 

“We’ll survive,” he said confidently, “You’re too much like a cockroach to die.”

“ _Excuse me.”_

Just think of the end goal, Goro. 

Forty thousand gil for spending a night in hell. It was an acceptable exchange. 

**Author's Note:**

> i just can't escape ffxiv... but, uh, yeah, ffxiv/p5 crossover! got any specific moments you want me to do just pop down a request and i'll see if i can fit it in.


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